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Discussion Game Developers in awe of Nintendo’s Tears of the Kingdom "miracle"

Lord Azrael said:
This feels like a very outdated take. Cinematic games aren't really the big thing anymore. They're mainly Sony's thing, and even they are starting to move away from it. They might be what you see mainly advertised in insular AAA gaming events, but on the whole they no longer comprise the largest percentage of successful modern games. Nowadays the trend to chase is multiplayer (battle royale optional) GaaS. And all the biggest games - Minecraft, Fortnite, etc. - are by and large freeform sandbox experiences.
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The entire business model Sony is pursuing is upgrading the hardware for achieving near photorealistic graphics for use with AAA cinematic games each generation. That's it, nothing more.
 
Maxrunner said:
The entire business model Sony is pursuing is upgrading the hardware for achieving near photorealistic graphics for use with AAA cinematic games each generation. That's it, nothing more.
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Which is why they said 60% of their first party output by 2025 will be GaaS right? And debuted three of those at their last showcase?
 
GrislyRaccoon said:
One of my cousins did like a small contracted work with Nintendo, he said he wished he was permanent. He didn't seem to shut about working with Nintendo. I know some contracted workers had problems with them, but it seems its according to the department.
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Oh, that sounds interesting! Could you tell us more about what it is what like for your cousin to work with Nintendo?
 
Most i've done is defining vertexes to draw a single polygon in Java, and even with that i'm constantly in awe with what i can make work in the game, let alone what i can see people making. I just witnessed a fucking walking mech with flamethrower hands.

I really really need an in depht interview or GDC panel about this stuff.
 
Dutchie said:
Oh, that sounds interesting! Could you tell us more about what it is what like for your cousin to work with Nintendo?
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We're getting closer to finding who the "uncle at Nintendo" is!

Joking aside, this is a good moment to remember that, when WiiU was doing poorly, Iwata slashed his salary by half and explicitly said that he though the only way out of the hole was by protecting the talent in the company. That last paragraph in the Polygon article (https://www.polygon.com/legend-zeld...-the-kingdom-bridge-physics-game-devs-explain):
Polygon said:
“In addition to the overall hard work of the team, the institutional knowledge is clearly a factor in why this ended up being so smoothly done,” Moon said. “The more stable and happy people are, the more they are able to make games of this quality. If you want good games, you have to give a damn about the people making them.”
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makes all the sense in the world now.
 
Dutchie said:
Oh, that sounds interesting! Could you tell us more about what it is what like for your cousin to work with Nintendo?
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ooo just got back to see this, he wasn't a developer, more in the accounting side of things, he was working from home, it was flexible and they actually gave the necessary equipment, whatever he needs. Only when it was month end he had to work long hours but they always ask him if everything is ok on his end.
 
GrislyRaccoon said:
ooo just got back to see this, he wasn't a developer, more in the accounting side of things, he was working from home, it was flexible and they actually gave the necessary equipment, whatever he needs. Only when it was month end he had to work long hours but they always ask him if everything is ok on his end.
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Sounds pretty cool!
 
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I just a video of someone making a suspension system for his vehicle out of fucking cookpots and it worked like a charm.
 
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IGN picked the story up and spoke with several developers themselves.

I don't have time right now but I'm going to pull up some interesting quotes from the article.

www.ign.com

Game Developers Share the Most Mind-Blowing, Inspiring Elements of Tears of the Kingdom - IGN

IGN spoke with five game developers — ranging from indie devs working on their first solo projects to devs with decades of AAA experience — about the most mind-blowing parts of Tears of the Kingdom, and if a universally-loved game like this is inspiring, deflating… Or a little bit of both.
www.ign.com www.ign.com
 
meatbag said:
Holy shit, that's how you're supposed to do that shrine? Damn, I abused Recall for that one haha.
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The one shown in the tweet by @looygi? I kinda solved the puzzle like that, but I had to give my a contraption a helping hand (or should I say ultrahand?), because it got stuck halfway and needed a little push.
 
meatbag said:
Yep! I just dragged the ball to a high place, let it hang there for a few seconds, then waited up top, used Recall, used Ultrahand to grab the ball while it was floating in midair haha.
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That was how I did it too, and to be honest how I did a lot of puzzles rather than play around with propulsion and levers. Leaves me feeling unimaginative when I see these puzzle solutions though
 
meatbag said:
Yep! I just dragged the ball to a high place, let it hang there for a few seconds, then waited up top, used Recall, used Ultrahand to grab the ball while it was floating in midair haha.
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Got curious and went to check the tweet.

Doesn't matter that i spoiled myself the solution for this shrine (haven't done that one yet) ... but it doesn't matter. That "intended" solution blew my mind, and there's a rather big chance i wouldn't have come up with it, so i'm not mad at myself.

Basically:
im-not-even-mad-thats-amazing.gif
 
I did the one in the tweet the same way as shown, it even looked a bit more fluid and elegant. Like a cog wheel.

But for many other shrines I as well just was holding a platform, a cube or something similar up high for a bit with Ultrahand, then recalling it while climbing/ascending on top of it.
 
IGN spoke with five game developers — ranging from indie devs working on their first solo projects to devs with decades of AAA experience — about the most mind-blowing parts of Tears of the Kingdom, and if a universally-loved game like this is inspiring, deflating… Or a little bit of both.

Zach Mumbach's been in the video game industry for a long time. He's worked on AAA franchises like Dead Space and Battlefield, and is now working at his own studio that's already shipped one game and is hard at work on a second. But even the most hardened video game developers are stunned, delighted, and just a little bit envious of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.



"Tears of the Kingdom is overwhelmingly impressive," he says. "The bar is set so unbelievably high. Even for me, having worked in AAA for 17 years, I see that game and I'm jealous. Because clearly they got the time that they needed to make it really good."
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For Mumbach, it comes down to the open world design. On a five-minute horse ride to his next objective, Mumbach says he's constantly distracted by visual cues Nintendo has planted across every inch of Hyrule's expansive map. But somehow, Mumbach says the sheer amount of content never becomes overwhelming because of the way the developers present it to the player.

"The open world is probably the best-constructed open world ever. I can drop you anywhere in the Tears of the Kingdom map and you can spin your camera around, and if you see a space that looks like something should be there, you will be rewarded for going there. Every single time… And that just isn't a thing I think any other open world game is even close to."
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The games industry is in the middle of a watershed moment thanks to Nintendo's latest masterpiece. Tears of the Kingdom is dominating the conversation on social media, as fans fall in love with its immersive exploration, complex building mechanics, and interconnected systems.

But developers are able to have an even deeper appreciation for the mastery on display in Tears of the Kingdom because of their own personal experiences with game development.

More to come....
 
James from indie studio Natsu Kaze is a solo dev working on Maple Forest, an indie game clearly influenced by top-down Zelda classics like A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening. Zelda is one of James' favorite series and main inspirations, and he's similarly impressed by the Ultrahand building mechanics — even though he admits he was initially worried the construction kit was just a gimmick.

"When I first heard Nintendo was adding building to the game, I kind of sweat a little… And then the game came out, and I was blown away," James says. "The building mechanics don't hurt the game at all, they strengthen it! Now that the game has released, it's obvious Nintendo thought carefully about Breath of the Wild's core strengths, its absolute freedom of exploration and it rewarding player curiosity and experimentation, and dove in and built what was surely an extremely time-consuming and expensive physics and building system to make that core shine even brighter. It's crazy, and it's amazing."
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bellydrum said:
Lol what? There is no debate there, wtf.
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Jencks said:
Self indulgent? What the fuck?
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Hahaha just trying to stir up debate that's all. In this case it's more of a value judgement as to whether a player thinks that chemistry/physics system being interwoven into the game adds any additional fun to their gameplay, compared to traditional game mechanics. I think if you're the sort of person who likes making your own fun in games, creating inventive solutions to problems or sandboxes in general, then you will definitely like it. I can see how people who don't care about that sort of thing may argue that it's overkill for them. Different use cases for games and I suppose it means this game isn't for them.
 
Gingerbread Man said:
I agree with your post. But the problem seems self-imposed. The Western AAA industry is working under belief that massive, realistic, cinematic games are the path forward. But are they? Zelda shows that AAA games of another kind are possible.

Like... Invest less in dubbing every single line, and adopt a more cartoony art style (just like BotW/TotK takes inspiration from Miyazaki's works, there A LOT of French, Italian and South American comics they could look at). You'll end up with more money for physics simulation, and a more abstract world for fun adventures, just like Zelda.
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Zelda is a massive, realistic (physics wise, not graphically) game too nowadays though. TOTK is absolutely HUGE and had a ton of people working on it. It depends.
 
etuev said:
Hahaha just trying to stir up debate that's all. In this case it's more of a value judgement as to whether a player thinks that chemistry/physics system being interwoven into the game adds any additional fun to their gameplay, compared to traditional game mechanics. I think if you're the sort of person who likes making your own fun in games, creating inventive solutions to problems or sandboxes in general, then you will definitely like it. I can see how people who don't care about that sort of thing may argue that it's overkill for them. Different use cases for games and I suppose it means this game isn't for them.
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You make it sound like the chemistry and physic systems are something optional the developers added on top of the game, while the truth is that they were the very core of the game and were present even before anything else was done. There was a prototype of BotW with Zelda1 graphics were Link could cut a tree, use it to cross water, set it on fire...and this was the first thing that was done when development started, long very any work started on the story, map, combat or traversal systems...


etuev said:
Zelda is a massive, realistic (physics wise, not graphically) game too nowadays though. TOTK is absolutely HUGE and had a ton of people working on it. It depends.
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Clearly @Gingerbread Man is referring to games that try to look realistic through their graphics, artstyle, animations....That's not the case with BotW or TotK. They aren't trying to be realistic, they are trying to be FUN. Kill a wolf and it turns into a steak, pet a horse and hearts will fly out of it. Everything is abstracted to trim out all the fat and make a beeline towards the fun. And this applies to the physics system as well, they're simplified in a way that they react like we expect them to, but they throw away all the complexity so we can just focus on the fun instead of on the number of freckles and details per square centimeter on the cheek of the main character.
 
etuev said:
Hahaha just trying to stir up debate that's all. In this case it's more of a value judgement as to whether a player thinks that chemistry/physics system being interwoven into the game adds any additional fun to their gameplay, compared to traditional game mechanics. I think if you're the sort of person who likes making your own fun in games, creating inventive solutions to problems or sandboxes in general, then you will definitely like it. I can see how people who don't care about that sort of thing may argue that it's overkill for them. Different use cases for games and I suppose it means this game isn't for them.
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Either way, nothing indicates self-indulgence on the part of the developers. There's no debate to be had there, just you asserting a behavior on the devs based on how people feel when playing it. Doesn't even make any sense.
 
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As incredible as BotW/TotK's gameplay systems are, this is still very much a AAA game through graphical fidelity, just localized to the Switch instead. Pushing crazy draw distances with minimal asset loading and load times is graphical fidelity of its own. The difference is that when making a game, you have to cut corners somewhere or invest millions. And BotW/TotK decides to deemphasize voice acting/detailed cutscenes to focus elsewhere.
 
correojon said:
You make it sound like the chemistry and physic systems are something optional the developers added on top of the game, while the truth is that they were the very core of the game and were present even before anything else was done. There was a prototype of BotW with Zelda1 graphics were Link could cut a tree, use it to cross water, set it on fire...and this was the first thing that was done when development started, long very any work started on the story, map, combat or traversal systems...



Clearly @Gingerbread Man is referring to games that try to look realistic through their graphics, artstyle, animations....That's not the case with BotW or TotK. They aren't trying to be realistic, they are trying to be FUN. Kill a wolf and it turns into a steak, pet a horse and hearts will fly out of it. Everything is abstracted to trim out all the fat and make a beeline towards the fun. And this applies to the physics system as well, they're simplified in a way that they react like we expect them to, but they throw away all the complexity so we can just focus on the fun instead of on the number of freckles and details per square centimeter on the cheek of the main character.
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Pet a horse?
 
Koren Lesthe said:
Quick reminder that this dude is permat-banned here and is also a racist.
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I know that the content is frash and clickbait and all but missed the racist part. Couldn't find anything, have a hint where to find it? (If no that's okay, I'm just curious)

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Feels like there should have been more analysis videos of this game. At least I was a little let down about fuse in Praxis, and Ultrahand was kinda impressive but never the draw for me.
 
Aether said:
I know that the content is frash and clickbait and all but missed the racist part. Couldn't find anything, have a hint where to find it? (If no that's okay, I'm just curious)

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Feels like there should have been more analysis videos of this game. At least I was a little let down about fuse in Praxis, and Ultrahand was kinda impressive but never the draw for me.
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Nintendo Direct: The Super Mario Bros. Movie | 10/6 1:05 p.m. PT

don't forget Jack black is part of that autism speaks oh for fuck’s sake
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Koren Lesthe said:
Quick reminder that this dude is permat-banned here
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Koren Lesthe said:
and is also a racist.
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Aether said:
I know that the content is frash and clickbait and all but missed the racist part.
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Not to continue diverting the thread toward this, but to clarify the ban in question is recent and resulted specifically sharing information to his viewerbase which was posted here under hide tags, all for the sweet Youtube views I guess:
WestEgg said:
Hey folks, NintendoPrime was showing hidden comments from this thread on his YouTube channel and has been permanently banned from Famiboards as a result. Please be aware that it is absolutely not acceptable to share information shared here confidentially.
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The responses probably pretty well ran their course at the time, but this is a reminder to respect the Hide if you want to protect your hide -- and also because there's often some reason content was hidden in the first place.

In any case, I should try to find some time to check out some Tears of the Kingdom videos. I haven't gotten to checking out the game itself yet, and I suspect I won't for some time, so I haven't investigated anything, but what I have picked up about it has been intriguing.

Aether said:
Feels like there should have been more analysis videos of this game.
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I wouldn't be surprised to see more of that pop up, and more in-depth, as time goes on.

It's incredible what can still be done on the Switch, and it would be fascinating to see what Nintendo could continue to create for it, though we probably won't get to see that.
 
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